


Well, It's Progress

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: Whole New Vision [8]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Child Abuse, Child Neglect, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-16
Updated: 2009-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 11:52:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3173082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stephen and Ryan never expected to keep one of their foster kids.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

001\. Autumn.   


It was autumn when Rav Patel, social worker, met Christopher Carlyle. It was October; the leaves were falling from the trees, and the new school year was not treating Christopher very well, between his being hit by a car, his being taken into care, and his mother’s impending trial for various drug offences and child neglect.

 

Christopher was a small, skinny little boy of six years old, with relentlessly sticking-up light brown hair, solemn grey eyes and a thin face. He was not dressed adequately for the weather. Rav cranked the radiator up a few notches.

 

“So, hi.” He smiled, and crouched down to Christopher’s level and shook his hand. “I’m your new social worker. My name’s Rav, what’s yours?”

 

“Christopher,” Christopher said with extreme reluctance.

 

Rav quirked an eyebrow. “You don’t like your name?”

 

Christopher shook his head silently.

 

“How about Chris, then? Like Chris Moyles? Or Chris Ryan?”

 

Christopher gave him a blank look, implying that he had heard of neither the radio presenter nor the author. Rav suddenly felt rather old.

 

“Hmm. Kit, then?”

 

“Kit,” Christopher said experimentally. “Kit.” He smiled shyly. “Can I be Kit?”

 

“Of course you can be Kit,” Rav said, suddenly grateful to give the child something, anything at all. “It suits you. Here, Kit- take a seat.”

  
002\. Spring.   


By spring the next year, Kit was quite firmly Kit rather than Christopher. He was also not much better off, and one day Rav found himself driving to the hospital in a tearing hurry, where he found Kit looking even paler and more pinched than usual, and still ever so slightly blue about the extremities.

 

“My God, Kit, what _happened_?” he burst out.

 

Kit slid further into his hospital bed, vanishing up to the nose in a cocoon of blankets, and looked doleful.

 

“Christopher was nearly drowned,” a disapproving nurse said. “Please don’t do anything which might excite him, Mr. Patel; he’s underweight, rather run-down, and this has badly affected him- we’re keeping him in for observation as it is.”

 

“Kit,” Rav said crossly. “His name is Kit. And I know that. I’m his social worker.” He sat down, and laid a hand on what might be Kit’s shoulder, with a bit of luck. “Kit, can you tell me exactly what happened?” He fished a Dictaphone out of his pocket. “Look, I’ve got the talky thing here. Tell me now and I’ll make sure you don’t have to go around repeating it a zillion squillion times later.”

 

Kit nodded, and sat up a little. The nurse rushed to help him. Rav turned on the Dictaphone, and said clearly: “The twenty-third of February, 2023. Kit Carlyle. Go on, Kit,” he added, encouragingly.

 

“They said I was a stupid bad swimmer,” he explained. “Stupid ’cause I can’t even float prop’ly yet.”

 

Rav had a strong suspicion that this had something to do with the teacher paying him little to no attention, but kept quiet.

 

“They said they’d teach me. I said ’kay. They pushed me in, only at the deep end ’n I couldn’t touch the bottom... like I’d have to swim. Except I couldn’t, ’n I got tired, ’n I sort of fell ’sleep...”

 

“Who pushed you in, Kit?” Rav asked.

 

“Big boys,” Kit said unhappily. “Max. Ashley. Bryan.”

 

Rav nodded. “Okay. Do you remember any more?”

 

Kit shook his head. “Just sinking. ’N Miss Collins shouting. ’N throwing up water.”

 

“The teacher who got him out,” the nurse said quietly. “She resuscitated him and came with him in the ambulance.”

 

Rav smiled at Kit. “I think we should say thank you to Miss Collins, yeah?”

 

Kit nodded, and burrowed back into his blankets.

  
003\. Summer.

 

Summer saw Kit’s first set of would-be foster parents. Rav knew they were not going to be a success the moment Louise greeted the boy as Christopher.

  
004\. Winter.   


By next winter, Kit had gone through four possible sets of foster parents, two of whom had fallen at the earliest hurdles. Ellen and Stanley Cohen Rav sent away with a flea in their collective ear, if not several wasps, four horseflies and a mosquito carrying dengue fever, after he discovered that they were making Kit call them Mum and Dad. Pam and Mike Yates Rav had blacklisted by the council in a fit of utter fury, after finding out that they were making Kit recite the catechism and go without meals for things like accidentally breaking a glass, and were also using him to take evangelising leaflets round.

 

“You just have appalling luck,” Rav said gloomily, and took Kit out for pizza to make up for it.

  
005\. Amused.

 

He told Kit’s mother that, since he was required to keep her updated on her child’s life- his father, apparently, was not in the picture. Christine Carlyle, serving the first year of her four year sentence, looked amused.

 

“It’s not funny,” Rav warned her.

 

Christine shrugged. “He knows who his mum is all right, and you’re not doin’ bad at keeping the bad ones away from him. I’ll be out soon enough and he’ll be back with me.”

 

“Subject to approval,” Rav snapped, irritated, and stamped out, more determined than ever to find Kit a proper bloody family.

  
006\. Balance.   


Rav came across Stephen Hart and Tom Ryan a year later, and thought, _actually, maybe this might work._ A couple in a civil partnership since 2008, have fostered before for short periods of time, active – yes, the name Stephen Hart rang a bell; of course, 2012 Olympics – and successful, running a thriving fitness club. They lived in Bristol - he’d have to talk that over with Kit; he might not like that.

 

At least they were guaranteed not to subject him to the catechism, Rav thought darkly. By this point, he reserved a special corner of his brain for loathing Kit’s enemies.

  
007\. Betrayal.

 

“Betrayal,” Kit said, eyes closed. “B-e-t-r-a-y-a-l.”

 

“Right,” said the boy testing him, peering at the sheet and choosing a word at random. “Different.”

 

“Different,” Kit repeated. “D-i-f-f-e-r-e-n-t.”

 

“Right.” The other boy put the sheet down. “This is stupid. Let’s go play football.”  


“No.” Kit picked up the sheet of words to spell. “My social worker’s coming.”

 

“Hey Kit,” Rav said, appearing in the doorway and grinning at him. “Think I’ve got a new set of foster parents for you. Proper ones.”

 

“Perhaps,” Kit said dubiously, staring at the sheet. “P-e-r-h-a-p-s... Why can’t people just say maybe?”

  
008\. Bunnies.   


Stephen and Ryan came down to meet Kit three weeks later, and Rav met them off the train. They looked like decent people- Ryan was scarred to hell and back, and Rav carefully didn’t stare, which proved more difficult when it came to Stephen. The man had to be in the late forties, but he was still damned good-looking, with stand-out blue eyes. And he’d been involved in the famous Anomaly Project, before its shutdown- they both had. Rav remembered idolising dinosaur-hunting hero scientists as a kid, and smiled slightly.

 

Stephen was also carrying a plastic bag, which he held up somewhat sheepishly. “Chocolate bunny thing. It’s nearly Easter. We thought...”

 

“You thought exactly right,” Rav said, astonished, but grinning outright. “Kit’ll love that.”

 

Ryan grinned. He was heavier-set than Stephen, and older, with greying hair, but his eyes were sharp and alert. “We thought he might. Does chocolate send him hyper?”

 

“No, only coffee,” Rav smiled, “and that was my fault. He’s waiting at the care home- there’s a bus...”

 

“Lead on,” Ryan said.

  
009\. Cemetery.

 

Kit was not actually waiting at the care home, as Rav’s sigh told them when they rounded the corner and discovered a boy, maybe seven years old, sitting on the wall of the churchyard next to the care home.

 

Ryan studied him, hanging back a little with Stephen as Rav hurried forward to tell Kit off. The boy was small and thin, almost colourless, with relentlessly sticking-up hair; Ryan watched his quick movements and realised that he was anxious, if not actually afraid.

 

But smart, he thought, seeing Kit glance at him and Stephen, realising how much he was taking in with just a look. Yes, smart.

  
010\. Chocolate.

 

Stephen held out the bag awkwardly, explaining what was in it, and Kit listened solemnly and accepted it, taking out the small chocolate rabbit. A wide smile slid onto his face, lighting up the grey eyes, and he said “thank you!” with surprise and delight obvious in his voice.

 

Ryan suddenly understood why Kit had inspired such affection in his social worker, and looked at Stephen, who was grinning back at Kit.  
  
011\. Cranky.   


“Do your scars still hurt?” Kit asked at the second meeting, blinking up at Ryan as they walked back to the care home.

 

Ryan stared down at him in surprise. The question had been matter-of-fact rather than rude, so he answered it. “Yes. Sometimes they ache.”

 

“Oh,” Kit said, and kicked a piece of gravel and shrugged. “Okay. I was just curious,” he explained. “Mine used to sometimes. It made me cross when they hurt.”

 

“You have scars?” Ryan asked, frowning. “How-?”

 

“Car accident,” Kit said indifferently, pronouncing it ‘axe-dent’, and clammed up.

 

012\. Curious.

 

A couple of weeks later, Stephen watched Ryan coaching Kit up the climbing wall, the boy crawling, spider-like, up towards the top. He turned to Rav, who had his hands shoved into his jacket pockets. “Can I ask- why did Kit end up in care in the first place?”

 

Rav shot him a careful, measuring look, and spoke, picking his words. “Kit was knocked over by a car when he was six, and quite badly hurt; his mother sent... an employee of hers... to pick him up from hospital, three hours later. That aroused suspicion, especially the track marks on the employee’s arm. Then it transpired that the police had their eye on Kit’s mother. She was jailed two years ago.” He paused, and folded his arms. “Kit will have to tell you the rest himself.”

   
013\. Decisions.   


Rav put down his biro and looked at Kit. “So what d’you think, Kit? Good foster parents? Be honest.”

 

“Yeah,” Kit said, without hestitating, and with the genuine shy grin that he was suddenly wearing a lot more.

  
014\. Destiny.

 

Rav was too used to Kit’s placements screwing up to dare to hope that this one might work, but when he looked at Kit and Stephen and Ryan he did think that, well, maybe...

 

Of course, Kit was still painfully shy, and Stephen was weirdly awkward for such a graceful man, and Ryan was keeping himself to himself as ever, but there might be something there. Might. Maybe.

 

Rav crossed his fingers.

  
015\. First Glance.  


“And this is your room,” Stephen said, opening a door which had _KIT_ on it in wooden letters painted with multiple small Ks, Is and Ts. Kit stepped over the threshold, and his jaw dropped.

 

“ _Wow_.”

 

Stephen smiled. “We hoped you’d like it.”

 

“It’s... It’s _great_ ,” Kit said, and then, on impulse, turned and hugged Stephen tightly. “Thank you!”

 

Stephen’s smile widened, and he hugged Kit back. “You want to get settled in?”

 

“Yeah, please,” Kit said shyly. Stephen smiled at him again, and left him to it.

 

He went to Ryan, who was making coffee in the kitchen. “I think you heard how well that went.”

 

Ryan grinned. “Yes. I think we owe Jamie Lester a six-pack of beer.”

 

It had been Stephen who’d spoken to Jamie Lester about what could be done to stop an eight-year-old London boy from getting too homesick after being transplanted suddenly to Bristol, and the artist (charming and compassionate, but still recognisably Lester’s son) had come up trumps with a huge mural on thick, almost-cardboard paper of the London skyline at night, as seen from the Thames, plus the letters on Kit’s door. “Glow-in-the-dark paint for the stars, too,” Jamie had said gleefully over the phone from Washington, where Ryan had called him up a week previously to explain the large cardboard box DHL had just delivered. “It’s the new stuff; lasts for years, which is probably longer than the mural will. _And_ I checked the constellations. _And_ I put a plane and the red light thingies on the Gherkin. It was fun!”

 

Stephen nodded, remembering the look on Kit’s face, and smiled with the pleasure of success.

 

016\. Love.   


Kit was a noticing kind of child. It took him three weeks to add up Stephen and Ryan’s little glances and touches and in-jokes and smiles, and get _love_ on the other side of the equals sign.

 

It was a bit mushy, but kind of cute.

  
017\. Lust.

 

A small accident with the washing-up degenerated into Stephen having an entire basin of warm soapy water emptied over his head, soaking him from the waist up.

 

Kit took one look at Ryan’s face, and vanished from the room, wet, Kit-sized footprints all there was to say that he had ever been there.

  
018\. Energetic.

 

Ryan watched Kit swarm up to the top of the adventure playground’s little climbing wall, and swing a leg over the bar at the top, turning to wave to the three men watching him from the ground. They grinned, and waved back, and as he slid into the rope tunnel and crawled over to another wooden tower of semi-deadly athletic delights, Rav turned to Stephen and Ryan in astonishment, shaking his head. “A month ago, Kit would never have done that. _Never_. What did you do to him?”

  
019\. Famous.

 

Every now and then, the occasional mad fan of Stephen’s turned up at the fitness centre; he still shot for Britain in the Olympics, although he no longer did pentathlon competitively. The staff kept tabs on these, and had long arguments about which was the nuttiest, embarrassing Stephen and making Ryan laugh himself stupid, particularly when Luci made the case for the middle-aged hen party. Alas, the argument was ended for all eternity when a sports reporter trotted into the centre and went ferreting... and found Kit.

 

“Hello. Can you tell me where Mr. Hart is?” he asked, bouncing up to Kit.

 

Kit blinked at him. “Why?”

 

“Because I’m looking for him.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because I’m a journalist.”

 

“Um, sorry, no.”

 

“What? Is there someone I should have contacted first?”

 

Kit stared blankly.

 

“Like, a PR guy?”

 

“What’s PR?” Kit asked reasonably.

 

“I- look, you know what? Just tell me where he is.”

 

“Don’t know. What’s PR?”

 

The journalist flung his hands into the air and stamped off, leaving Kit puzzled and the sixth-form girl on work experience at the café giggling. Then Stephen ducked out of the broom cupboard Kit had been sitting next to, and grinned at him. “Thanks, Kit.”

 

“Stephen,” Kit said, “What’s PR?”

  
020\. Fight.

 

The day Kit came home from school with a black eye, fat lip and mulish expression to match Stephen’s despairing one, Ryan was astonished. The kid looked like he’d break if he tripped on a leaf, so why had he been fighting? A phone call to the primary school’s headmaster elicited the information that the son of the local jingoistic headcase had been sounding off in the playground about poofs, and Kit had told him where he got off, ducked the first punch, and headbutted the other kid in the gut, starting a serious brawl. Since the boy in question was six months older, four inches taller, and considerably better built, Ryan was really quite impressed that Kit hadn’t been _totally_ pasted.

 

Still, they stood over him while he wrote a misspelt letter of apology, and made him swear that if he wanted to come to the Forest of Dean with them, he wouldn’t get into any fights.

  
021\. Flame.

 

The girl had fire in her eyes, was Kit’s first, startled impression. She was trailing behind people that made his instincts scream _dangerous_ but who Ryan and Stephen welcomed as friends, and although her expression was neutral, her eyes were bright and sharp.

 

Ryan introduced him to Lorraine and Niall, who seemed nice, although Kit watched Niall carefully – there was something not-right about him, a dangerous kind of not-right, the not-right his mother’s friends were when they carried weapons – and then the girl stepped forward. She was a little taller than him, with wildly curly brown hair, brown skin, and a stubborn mouth. “I’m Carys,” she said without preamble.

 

“I’m Kit,” he answered, politely, and she tipped her head to one side and treated him to a small smile, then introduced him to the rest of the kids and kicked a tactless boy called Robbie hard enough to bruise in the shins when Robbie asked about his family.

 

It was definitely easier than making friends at the foster home, Kit decided, and attached himself to mostly-silent Carys with fire in her eyes for the rest of the day.

  
022\. Found.

 

They had all been about to panic, as Connor’s old hand-held detector went off while he was running it through the different radio bands for the emergency meeting, trying to prove that he’d had no activity on 87.6, and they discovered that Kit and Carys were missing and a window open (which, as Blade had growled, “is as good as a fucking signpost to Carys!”), when the two children piled back into the hotel, breathless and wide-eyed. Carys tried to stop, failed, and tumbled straight across the floor into her irate father’s arms, and Kit stumbled over the carpet and Abby and Stringer’s twins in quick succession. He could have survived one obstacle, but not both, and Ryan’s lunge to catch him by the scruff of his neck missed, so that he fell flat on his face onto the floor.

 

“Ow! Monkey balls!” yelped one of the twins, feet tangling with the other twin’s feet and causing them both to crash to the ground.

 

“Holly, you _know_ what mum said about language,” Joel warned a little half-heartedly, disentangling his daughters. “Blade, what’s eating at that hell-kitten of yours? She looks like she’s seen a ghost!”

 

Blade, who was holding Carys off the ground by her shoulders, glared at her. She caught her breath, and spluttered: “We found- we founded-“

 

“Found,” Lorraine corrected.

 

“A nom- anomal- an anomaly!” Carys concluded triumphantly.

 

“Oh bloody buggering _fuck_ ,” Joel said automatically, and both of his daughters erupted into delighted giggles.

 

“Mum’s going to wash your mouth out with soap and wa- _ter_ ,” sing-songed one of them. She might have been Holly, or she might have been Lucy; most people couldn’t tell the difference.

 

Ryan hauled Kit off the ground and set him gently on his feet. Kit looked up at him with wide, serious eyes. “What’s a nommally?”

 

“A-no-maly,” Lyle enunciated for Kit’s benefit. “It means trouble, kid.”

 

Ryan saw Kit’s mouth open and shape the word Kit with an indignant emphasis on the _t_ , but not a sound escaped his mouth. He grinned.

  
023\. Lost.

 

“Oh, he’s fallen asleep,” Claudia said haplessly, looking down at Kit. “Bless. Stephen, Ryan, I’ve found him.”

 

“Thanks, Claudia,” Stephen said with relief, heading over. He’d thought they’d lost Kit for the second time in twenty-four hours, which would be unimpressive even given that Carys Richards, who had been a tricky customer ever since she learnt to crawl, had been helping him the first time. “...Oh.”

 

The boy had gone to sleep on a cushioned bench, one of the ones that provided seating on one side of the Mitchells’ tables, and his head and shoulders were dangling, upside-down, over the edge. Nonetheless, he was fast asleep, and actually snoring lightly. He looked at peace, for once; neither anxious nor wary.

 

Stephen scooped him up. “Tired,” he explained to Ryan, and pretended it didn’t warm his heart when Kit rested his head against his fleece jacket, settling in his arms.

  
024\. Frustrated.

 

“Look, Kit,” Stephen said, increasingly frustrated, “what’s wrong with the pool? It’s perfectly ordinary. No sharks lurking in the bottom. There are lifeguards, and you’re with me. It’s just the fitness centre, you’ve been here before-“

 

“Can’t swim,” Kit mumbled, bright red with embarrassment.

 

Stephen screeched to a verbal halt. “You what?”

 

“Can’t swim,” Kit repeated, slightly louder.

 

Stephen eyed him, baffled. “Why?”

 

Kit explained about the swimming lessons that had not worked, and the boys that had tried to drown him, and Rav’s summarily removing him from the swimming class. Stephen stared, mouth agape.

 

“I’m sorry, Kit, I had no idea.”

 

Kit muttered something that might have been ‘not your fault’, crimson to the ears and shoulders hunched in embarrassment. Stephen ruffled his hair, in a sort of mute apology. “Well, we can’t have this, not with you running around with Carys Richards, or she’ll get you drowned.”

 

Kit smiled reluctantly.

 

“I’ll teach you to swim,” Stephen promised, “and I won’t throw you in the deep end either.”

  
025\. Giggly.  


Three months later, Ryan did just that, both he and Kit laughing like fiends over some silly joke, and Stephen watched and grinned as Kit flew through the air, vanished into the water with a mighty splash, shot to the surface like a cork and paddled easily to the side, still giggling.


	2. Chapter 2

026\. Gun.

 

Stephen and Ryan had expected many things of Kit, but they found themselves clueless as to how he would react when Brad showed off his latest lethal acquisition to them and Kit returned, a little too speedily, from getting Stephen’s jacket out of the car. Kit walked almost silently, and Brad was not quick enough to hide the gun.

 

As it happened, Kit stopped dead in the kitchen doorway, his eyes riveted on the weapon, and then held out the jacket and car keys. Stephen took them. Then the boy walked straight back out and sat on the garden wall facing away from the house, knees drawn up, until it was time to go. Much later, just before bed, he said to Ryan: “You should tell your friend that guns don’t help. They don’t make you safe or anything. They just kill people.”

  
027\. Knife.

 

He didn’t seem to have the same hang-up about the knife Blade showed him while demonstrating its use to his daughter; a bit of wood was turning, slowly, into a very elaborate star, Carys was staring at it as if staring would make it happen faster, or turn funny colours, and Kit was intrigued.

 

“That’s ’cause knives have got lots of uses,” Kit explained, attacking a chunk of soap with a plastic knife, “not just hurting people.”  
  
Ryan put the small and wonky soap K Kit produced on a shelf in the kitchen, next to the fridge, and reflected that he had a point.

  
028\. Heartache.   


Stephen never asked Kit if he got homesick, because he was afraid that the answer would be yes.

 

The answer was no, as Kit explained to Josh from the fitness centre (who did not have Stephen’s scruples.) Kit was not sure where home was any more. It used to be where his mother was, but his mother was in jail and in any case he had not seen her much for years. It was never the care home. It was never any of the foster parents’ houses.

 

Josh grunted, read between the lines, bought Kit a chocolate bar out of the fitness centre café, and said nothing more to anyone.

 

029\. Justice.   


Kit was accustomed to do his homework sitting on the floor in Ryan’s office, silent and inconspicuous and prone to vanishing behind a singularly hideous pot-plant, his books swept under a chair, if anyone threatened to come in. One day he’d gone down to the pool for a congratulatory swim after finishing a fiendish Maths sheet, and had left his books stacked neatly on the floor.

 

Luci came in and tripped straight over them. “Ouch!”

 

“Luci?” Ryan got up to help her, and she picked herself up, scowling.

 

“What?...” She picked up the books, and read the name. “Kit Carlyle? Are these Kit’s things?”

 

“Yeah,” Ryan said, taking them from her. “He was doing his homework.”

 

“Do you... by any chance... happen to know what his mother’s name is?”

 

“Christine, I think,” Ryan said, frowning. “I’ve heard his social worker bitching about her.”

 

“Oh God,” Luci moaned, putting several metaphorical jigsaw pieces together at once, and sat down hard on a chair. “Ryan, did you realise that your foster kid is the son of a _drugs dealer_?”

 

“No, but it explains a lot,” Ryan said, surprised. “Kit said she was only in for four years, though- don’t you get more than four years for dealing drugs?”

 

Luci growled the growl of a thwarted copper, presumably in sympathy with the officers who had caught Christine Carlyle, since she had left the police force a long time ago. “It depends how good your lawyer is.”

  
030\. Leather.

 

Kit scuffed his school shoes against the floor, and waited, bag slung over his shoulders. Finally, Stephen appeared, grabbed a jacket, and grinned at him. “School time, Kit. I know you’re just raring to go."

  
031\. Education.

 

Stephen and Ryan took it in turns to walk with Kit to school, where he was registered as Kit Carlyle, and where the teachers were rhapsodising about his manners, if not about his reluctance to talk.

 

Stephen still remembered the startled, blank look on Kit’s face when he realised they weren’t just showing him the way so he could go on his own.

  
032\. Lessons.

 

It took a disturbingly long time to teach Kit that they cared about him, about what he thought and felt. Sometimes, Stephen felt as if the boy would never learn.  
  
033\. School.   


Kit brought the envelope home, and Ryan and Stephen read it after dinner. “Hey, this is good, Kit,” Stephen said, and it _was_ , the teachers commenting favourably on his manners and saying he was very bright and worked hard, if too quiet for their taste.

 

Kit smiled shyly back at them, and accepted a hug. Ryan got the impression that he only cared about the report because it pleased them.

  
034\. Teacher.

 

“I’m concerned about Kit,” Mr. Dauntry said frankly, leaning back in his chair and eyeing Stephen and Ryan. “He’s always been a quiet lad, I remember how he was when you first brought him here, wouldn’t say boo to a goose, but he’d got so much better. He talked, and took part in lessons, and even smiled, every now and again...”

 

Ryan frowned, and leaned forward. “Have you noticed him getting quieter? Because we have.”

 

Mr. Dauntry nodded, playing with the sign from his desk that said HEADMASTER. “Any ideas why?”

 

Stephen and Ryan shared a look, and then Stephen folded his arms, stretched out long legs, and looked down at his feet, lips pressed tightly together. “We think it has something to do with his mother,” Ryan said, with artificial calm. “Her prison time is up soon, and she’ll be looking to take Kit back.”

 

Mr. Dauntry lost his balance, flailed for a minute, and grabbed the edge of the desk, pulling himself and his chair back to solid ground. “ _What_? I thought you were going to adopt him!”

 

“We would have done,” Stephen said to his feet. “We’d love to.”

 

“We haven’t talked to Kit about it,” Ryan said heavily. “They probably won’t let us- he’ll probably have to go back to his mother- and we can’t get his hopes up.”  


Mr. Dauntry pinched the bridge of his nose. “She’d better look after him,” he said at last.

 

Silently, Stephen and Ryan agreed.

   
035\. Encounter.  


“Mum’s prison time is up,” Kit had told them, looking tired. “She wants me to come back.” He’d paused. “I said... a - trial period? A week.”  
  
Stephen couldn’t face leaving Kit in London, so he said goodbye in Bristol and Ryan took him down. After an uneventful and mostly silent journey, they reached Paddington Station, and got off the train. Ryan looked at Kit. “You got everything?”  
  
Kit nodded, and Ryan’s gut twisted uncomfortably as he saw the pinched look on Kit’s face. He knelt down to Kit’s level. “Kit, look at me.”

 

Kit did.

 

“You can come back whenever you like. Stephen and I will always want you back.” He fished in his pocket and held out a plastic bag. Kit recognised only one of the items in it; his ticket. “I bought you a return for a reason. It’s valid for this whole week.” He hesitated. Rav would skin him if he knew about this. “This Saturday, the day after tomorrow, we’re going to Hereford, to Ditzy and Claire’s house. That’s the address written in blue. The address in black is Niall and Lorraine’s address, Carys’ address. They’re also going to Hereford, though. If you don’t feel safe at any time, Kit, get out. Okay? Get out. There’s money for a taxi or a train or whatever you need, just _go_.”

 

Kit’s eyes were wide as saucers. Ryan shook his shoulders gently. “Hey. No dishonour in retreat.”

 

Kit hugged him, clinging limpet-like for a good couple of minutes before disengaging, and stepping back. Ryan straightened.

 

“Now. Can you see your mum?”

 

Kit turned, and saw a woman with light brown hair in a ponytail; thinner than he remembered, and dressed in plainer clothes, but still immediately recognisable. She had not seen him. “Yeah.”

 

“Go to her.” Ryan’s instincts screamed that he should not let Christine Carlyle see his face, and were listened to. “I’ll be in the shadow of this pillar, okay? You won’t see me, but I won’t go until you give a thumbs-up. If you’re not sure, give a thumbs-down, and I’ll come back and we’ll go back to Bristol.”  


Kit nodded. “Yeah.” He hugged Ryan round the waist. “Thanks.”

 

“Good lad.” Ryan hugged Kit back, then let him go, and slid quietly into a shadow, disappearing. Kit walked away without looking back, to the woman.

 

“Mum?” he asked uncertainly, and Christine Carlyle started and looked down.

 

“Christopher!” She seized him in a hug. Kit tried not to compare her to Ryan, and failed.

 

“Mostly people call me K-“ he started, and then changed hurriedly for reasons he didn’t understand, “Chris.”

 

“Okay. Chris.” Christine smiled down at him. “God, you’ve got so _big_. They been feeding you well, these foster parents.”  
  
Kit smiled back, a little reassured. “Yeah.”  
  
“Where are they?” Christine asked, looking round.

 

“My foster dad is there,” Kit said, pointing to where Ryan had been. “No, he moved... I see him. There.” He jerked his head in Ryan’s general direction, but not at Ryan, reasoning that Ryan had hidden for a reason.

 

Christine squinted. “Can’t see him.”

 

“He’s there,” Kit insisted.

 

Christine shrugged. “Okay, Chris. Does he want to talk to me?”  


“No,” Kit said, truthfully. “He said specially this is b’tween you and me.”

 

“I like him already,” Christine said impatiently. “Now let’s go.” She took Kit’s hand, and led him away.

 

Kit hesitated.

 

Then he gave a thumbs-up.

  
036\. Naughty.

 

“Stop talking about them,” Christine said in irritation, after Kit mentioned Stephen and Ryan on his second day at their new home, a featureless council flat. “You’re back with me, now.”

 

Kit looked at her in consternation. Stephen and Ryan constituted the most interesting part of his life to date, and he was experiencing difficulty not talking about them; furthermore, he was getting more and more uneasy, and wasn’t sure that he didn’t want to run straight back to them, like a little kid with nightmares. He had been consoling himself with the thought that it was only a week. Rav had said so, and Rav never lied to him. “But... trial period?...” he ventured feebly.

 

Christine gave him a sharp look. “That’s all rubbish. You’re staying with me, Chris.”

 

“But,” he said before he could stop himself.

 

“But what?” Christine snapped.

 

“I don’t know if I don’t want to go back to them yet,” he blurted, and shut his eyes in horror.

 

Shouting began, and did not stop, and he felt a slap land on his face and deliberately fell off his chair, curling into a ball on the floor, kicks and punches, and then hoisted off the floor with unreal strength, and sharp pain in one ear, dragged on stumbling feet, his ear, pain, he could feel her nails meeting through his ear, skin, cartilage, blood, and the door slammed, and locked, and an aching head and a painful ear.

 

“You’re not coming out till you know how to behave!” Christine yelled.

 

Kit curled up on his new bed, bleeding onto the pillow and not caring, shivering but not crying, and his mind made up for him.

 

Christine had made a mistake by locking him into his room. She’d done half the work for him: left him in a room with a window that opened and was only first floor (and Carys had taught him how to shin down drainpipes, hadn’t she?), his bag with the ticket and money and addresses, all his clothes.

 

Kit shuddered, forcing himself to breathe slower, deeper, and waited. He was good at that. And when she went out, and he heard the door slam, he jumped up and dressed quickly from the pyjamas he’d still been wearing at breakfast, stuffed some other clothes, his school-issue computerbook, and the iPod MegaShuffle Rav had given him for his last birthday into his rucksack. He took stock for a second. His toothbrush and toothpaste were in the bathroom, and he dismissed them without a moment’s thought; his watch on his wrist, and the compass Ryan had given him around his neck. His ear had dried, but he put the hood up on his hoodie to stop anyone noticing the blood; as an afterthought, he shoved the stained pyjama top into his rucksack as proof.

 

Then he climbed up onto his bed, and opened the window. It was not a long way down, considering the climbing wall in the gym, and the window was easily small enough to get through; also, it opened onto dustbins, a skip and a back alley, not a proper road. Kit dropped his rucksack into the skip, and tested the drainpipe nervously. Now or never, he thought, wondering when his mother would be back.

 

As quickly as he dared, he climbed down the drainpipe, dropped into the skip, grabbed his rucksack in shaking hands, jumped out of the skip... and ran.

 

037\. Monsters.   


London seemed to be full of monsters as he fled, people who would notice him and take him away, to police or the care people, who would send him back to his mother and hell. Instinctively, he stuck to the quieter streets, running at random, dodging, jinking, ducking. He was small and fast and he knew London, even though Bristol was replacing it in his memories, and after a while he found himself in front of a museum with a green dome, and two huge guns in front of it. Kit wandered around its grounds until he found a bench, and sat down, and breathed.

 

He was a long way away from where he had come, he knew that much, and he recognised the museum; Rav had brought him here once, and held forth at length on pacificism, which nearly got them lynched by a group of doddery RAF veterans. It was close to Lambeth North Tube Station, yes? And he could get a Tube from there to Paddington. Today was Saturday, and Ryan had warned him that everyone would be in Hereford. You could catch a train to Hereford from Paddington, couldn’t you?

 

He kicked his heels for another few moments, then got up, bought an icecream from a van, and started to walk towards the Tube station. It took him an hour to get to Paddington, because he was both tired and trying to fit into the crowd by dawdling, and when he got there he found that he’d missed the train, and the next train would be in fifteen minutes. Undaunted, he bought a child’s single ticket from a ticket machine, which, being electronic, did not ask his age, and went to the men’s toilets, where he discovered that he looked a bit battered; he had a split lip, and the blood from his ear had dried all down his neck, but had luckily been hidden by the hoodie. Kit washed the blood off, tried to arrange his hair into some kind of order, and hoped that his stiff movement- now that he was no longer fuelled by adrenaline –would not give him away. He went out and headed for the platform, buying a sandwich, crisps and a drink on the way; he had been astonished by the amount of money Ryan had left him, and given that his child single had cost less than a third of it, not to mention the fact that he was still hungry after the ice cream and tired from his exertions, he felt justified in spending a little.

 

He caught the train, quickly commandeered a window seat, and began to eat. The ticket inspector came round and scanned Kit’s ticket. “Bit young to be travelling alone, aren’t you?” he said kindly, and Kit smiled at him, an operation made easier by the idea that he was going to find Stephen and Ryan.

 

“I’m twelve!” he lied indignantly. “Just short. My mum put me on the train,” he added, pointing at a woman scrutinising the train for her friend, and waving enthusiastically to her.

 

“Oh?” the ticket inspector said. “Oh... all right. Where are you going?”  
  
“To see my dad,” Kit said, and (feeling rather guilty) added something almost guaranteed to shut the ticket inspector up. “He’s in the army and I haven’t seen him for months and _months_.”

 

“Which regiment?” the ticket inspector asked, looking interested. Kit cursed mentally. “And why isn’t your mum going with you, then?”

 

“Mum ’n Dad are divorced,” he said flatly, hoping that would help as he frantically tried to remember a regiment name, and then remembered the woman called Liz who’d been at the hotel with the Mitchells all those months ago, with her short dark hair and her scars. “And Paras.” He held out his hand for his ticket, trying to look a little sullen.

 

“All right then, lad, no need to get moody,” the ticket inspector said mildly, and handed back the ticket and moved off.

 

Kit breathed a sigh of relief as soon as he was gone and settled into his corner, gulping his drink. Stephen had got him addicted to orange juice, he remembered, and smiled. Not far to Hereford.

 

Far enough to fall asleep, though, and he jolted awake when he heard the announcer say “Hereford,” and the smooth motion of the maglev train halted. He got up and stretched; all his bruises ached. The ticket inspector, passing by, smiled at him. “Going to see your dad?”

 

Kit found a smile for him, although he was worried that the man had remembered who he was. “Yup.”

 

He hopped off the train, aware of the ticket inspector’s eyes on him, and promptly lost himself in a crowd of schoolchildren, then ducked swiftly into the men’s toilets, used them, and came out again. The ticket inspector, to his satisfaction, was gone.

 

Kit fished the scrap of paper with blue writing on it out of his bag, and read the address. He sidled over to a man distributing free newspapers. “’Scuse me. Do you know where this is?” He showed the man the piece of paper.

 

The man nodded, and gave him directions, scribbling them down on a newspaper as he talked, which he handed to Kit. Kit listened, repeated salient points, and then thanked the man and went away.

 

 _Nearly there_ , he reminded himself when he thought his legs were going to buckle, when it started to rain, when it got very dark and his ear throbbed. _Nearly there_.

  
038\. Movie Night.   


The doorbell went. “Sam, get it!” Claire yelled, giving Robbie the DVD for the kids to watch upstairs while the grownups talked. Ditzy’s elder son, who promised to look exactly like his dad and certainly delivered a very Ditzy-ish scowl, scowled, slid off his chair and ran for the front door.

 

His squeak of “Kit!” and following shout of “ _Dad_!” brought everyone running.

 

039\. Need.   


Ditzy grabbed Kit, pulling him into the hallway. “Kit! Kit, what happened?”

 

Kit didn’t answer him; he was swaying and moon-pale, soaked and shivering, and he flinched when Ditzy touched his arms. Ditzy pushed back Kit’s hood and swore, looking at the mark on his ear and the dried, crusted blood around it.

 

“Stephen. Ryan,” Kit whispered, and passed out into Ditzy’s arms.

 

Ditzy straightened, lifting Kit, and shoved his way into the living room, ignoring everyone, and laid Kit down on a sofa, starting to strip him of his sodden clothes and swearing with increasing volume as he uncovered the heavy bruises on Kit’s back and legs. “I thought you said you took him to his mother, Tom!” he snapped, scrubbing Kit dry with a towel. “There, Kit, easy now,” he added as the child gasped into consciousness again and started to shudder in earnest.

 

“It’s okay, Kit, you’re safe,” Ryan assured the boy, and said to Ditzy: “I did. I’ll rip her limb from limb for doing this to Kit.”

 

“Her own _son_ ,” Stephen hissed furiously, blue eyes on fire, and took the dry clothes Sam brought and helped Kit dress. Ditzy gave Kit one paracetamol to dull the pain of the bruises, and cleaned and bandaged his ear as best as he could; Christine’s long, sharp nails had left a split in the tissue. Ditzy kept to himself his opinions about hatred, given that those nails had had to punch through cartilage. “God, Kit, I’m so sorry, we should never have let you go...” Stephen wrapped Kit in blankets as Rees gave him a hot water bottle to hold and cracked the discs in four reusable handwarmers, one for each of Kit’s hands and feet.

 

Kit did not answer, just stared at Stephen and Ryan and snuggled against Stephen. Carys crawled up onto the sofa beside him, and glared at him, cat-eyed with fury, hands curled into tight fists. “Was it your mum?” she demanded.

 

Kit nodded.

 

Carys cracked her knuckles matter-of-factly. “Want me to sort her?”

 

Ryan grinned, and mouthed _like father like daughter_ at Blade, who rolled his eyes almost sheepishly. Kit giggled.

 

Blade cleared his throat to get his daughter’s attention. “Carys, sorting people is illegal.”

 

Carys looked momentarily disappointed, and then shrugged philosophically and tucked a corner of Kit’s blanket in better. Her father turned to Ryan and Stephen. “Lorraine says to ring his social worker. Unless Kit’s mum is so negligent she hasn’t noticed he’s gone, you _need_ to call the social worker before he calls out the police.”

 

“Rav’ll be worried,” Stephen commented, holding Kit tightly.

 

Ryan nodded, and got to his feet. Kit’s hand worked free of the blankets and shot out, grabbing Ryan’s wrist. “It’s all right,” Ryan said gently. “I’m not going anywhere, yeah? Just to get my mobile.”

 

Kit’s mouth twisted unhappily.

 

“Where’d you leave it?” Blade asked. Ryan told him, and went to sit by Kit as Blade left the room to find the mobile.

 

Carys gave him a look, then hugged Kit fiercely. “If your mum comes here I’ll make her _pay_ ,” she announced trenchantly, then slid off the sofa, relinquishing her place to Ryan, and left the room.

 

Ryan and Stephen arranged themselves so that Kit was lying across them, and could see and touch both of them. He seemed to need that, his eyes flickering between them as if he wasn’t sure they were really there.

 

Blade came back with the mobile, handed it over to Ryan and smiled at Kit. “You all right, Kit?”

 

Kit nodded, and pressed his face into Stephen’s chest. Blade reached out and ruffled his hair gently.

 

“Having kids has _mellowed_ you, Niall,” Ryan grinned, finding Rav’s number in his contact book, and Blade gave him the finger and left.

 

Ryan held the phone to his ear and waited. Finally, Rav picked up. “Ryan? What? If it’s about Kit, he’s with his mum, I know you’re worried, I am too- I’m going to do a surprise visit tomorrow to check-“

 

“Rav. Did you know Kit had run away?”

 

“What!” Rav shrieked. “What! Where? How do you know? When? How? Is he okay? Have you called the police?”

 

“Calm down! We’ve got him, me and Stephen. He came to us.”  


“Oh, thank _God_ ,” Rav said fervently. “I’m sorry, but I’ve seen Kit half-drowned and half-starved, and I most heartily do _not_ want to see him all dead.”

 

“Christ.” Ryan shuddered. “None of us do. Look, Rav, we are not letting him go back to his mother. Not now. She beat the crap out of him- he’s got bruises all over his back and legs, it looks like she kicked him while he was down and we can just thank God she didn’t kick his head in while she had the chance, and he’s got a split in the top of his ear. Made by her nails, Rav. Her _nails_. She fucking well-“  


“Ryan,” Stephen warned, and Kit laughed sleepily.

 

“-dragged him around with her nails, _by his ear_. So Kit got out, God knows how, caught a train to Hereford-“

 

“You live in Bristol,” Rav pointed out, voice stunned and dull.

 

“We were in Hereford for a meet-up. Kit remembered. Good thing too, Kit was freezing and bleeding when he got here and we’ve got... what... three medics here?”

 

“Good. Good.” Rav sounded like he had his head in his hands. “Is Kit there?”

 

“Yeah. Half asleep, but warming up.”

 

 “Give him the phone. I need to grovel. God, why did I not see this coming, why didn’t I say no- Ryan, I am so sorry, tell Stephen too, I was getting leaned on from here, there and everywhere, there’d been an assessment, she seemed safe, she had supervision and she’d done six months out of jail and stayed clean, no touching in with her old contacts... I thought it was _safe_! I swear to fucking God, _heads will roll_.”

 

“You’re not the only one to say that,” Ryan said.

 

Rav laughed. “Yeah. Well. Kit inspires affection. If not downright love. Except in that bitch of a woman calling herself his mother- she really needs her head examined, if you ask me... Are you going to pass Kit the phone?”

 

“Ah,” Ryan said. “He’s fallen asleep.”

 

“Then don’t wake him for me. Who’s treating him for his various bumps and scratches? Are you taking him to hospital?”

 

“Probably not tonight,” Ryan said. “He seems OK physically; just knackered, bruised and shocked, and he won’t let me or Stephen out of his sight. And Ditzy. David Owen. He’s a paramedic.”

 

“O-kay.” Rav seemed to be taking notes. “Can I talk to him?”

 

“Probably.”

 

On cue, Ditzy came back in and knelt by Kit, reaching into the cocoon of blankets to feel his hands and feet, check his pulse and the dressing on his ear. Ryan held out the phone to him. “Ditzy, it’s Kit’s social worker. He wants to talk to you. His name’s Rav Patel.”

 

“Right,” Ditzy said, and took the phone. “Mr Patel? Call me David, then. What do you want to know?...”

 

He wandered down to the other end of the sitting room, and Ryan looked at Stephen.

  
“Adopt him?” Stephen murmured, looking appealing.

 

Ryan chuckled. “Look at you, you’re practically saying ‘can we keep him?’ Well, since he followed us home...”

 

Stephen smiled, but said “No, seriously, Ryan.”

 

“Seriously?” Ryan shrugged. “If you didn’t suggest it, I was going to.”

 

Stephen’s face split into a glorious grin.

  
040\. Otherworld.  


The corridors of the government building – modern, a little tatty at the edges; white walls, shiny floors, and bog-standard pine – bustled with activity, men and women in smart suits marching up and down, carrying folders, talking into mobile phones. Kit stayed close to Stephen and Ryan, holding Ryan’s hand.

 

“We nearly there?” Ryan asked Rav, who was trying to lead the way.

 

“Um, probably,” Rav said. “God, I hate this building. Foul. A-ha!” He made a determined dive for a pine door, and knocked.

 

“Come in!” came the yell, and Rav pushed the door open and shook hands with the person on the other side of the desk, who sat all four of them down and explained various bits of paper which had to be signed by various different people. It was like some kind of otherworld composed of black and white words and paper, that you vanished into for what felt like twenty years, then came out of and discovered it had only been twenty minutes; but you were still changed for life.

 

Kit walked out with a new name and a new life and a new family, and thought it was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

  
041\. Peaceful.   


“So,” Claire said, tapping the end of a biro against her desk, “I was thinking, two weekends away? That Saturday?”

 

“Sounds good to me,” Stephen agreed, marking it on the calendar. There was a yell, and high-pitched giggling.

 

“Something going on at your end?” Claire asked, but a shout of ‘Steeeeepheeeeeen!’ and a shrill shriek drowned her out.

 

“What? Oh, nothing, this is normal. Kit! Ryan! Stop abusing each other, I’m trying to talk to Claire!”

 

Claire later told Ditzy it was the only thing she’d ever heard that made her own home sound peaceful.

  
042\. Promise.   


The nightmare had clearly been a bad one. Although Kit was quiet when he had bad dreams, as in everything else, a whimper or two had been loud enough to fetch Stephen and Ryan in from their movie, and Stephen darting ahead woke the boy, shaking his shoulders gently and half-scooping him up. “Kit! Kit. Wake up. It’s only a bad dream, only a dream. It’s okay. Ssh, Kit...”

 

“She got me,” Kit sobbed, tears running down his crumpled face. “She took me back. Don’t let her get me!”

 

“She’s never going to get you again,” Stephen promised, hugging him fiercely. “Never. You’re _ours_ now. We won’t let you go.”

 

043\. Ritual.   


At first, it was just a label in the cloakroom: _Carlyle_ scratched out and _Ryan_ replacing it. Then it was nametags, _Ryan_ written over _Carlyle_ in indelible black pen. Then it was solemnly informing the teachers, who scratched out _Carlyle_ in their registers and put in _Ryan_ , and Mr. Dauntry, who changed the school records to _Hart Ryan_ (appropriate for accuracy, but a bit long for everyday wear, and enough people mistook Kit for Stephen’s son or nephew anyway.)

 

It was Carys who noticed that Kit smiled every time he wrote his new name, and because she was Carys, she said nothing.

  
044\. Silk Sheets.   


One night when Kit had nightmares three times, Ryan picked him up and carried him into their room, dropping him onto the mattress between Stephen – wearing a t-shirt and boxers on account of the number of times Kit had had them up, and the wish not to traumatise him by running into his room naked – and the space where he had been lying.

 

“I hope you don’t snore,” Ryan said, climbing into bed beside the pair, seeing how Stephen, blinking and sleepy, had already turned to face Kit and given him one of the pillows. “Stephen does.”

 

“Not as loudly as Ryan,” Stephen disagreed, and yawned.

 

“You don’t snore,” Kit whispered, and sniffed, wiping tear-tracks from his face with his pyjama sleeve.

 

“Ha,” Ryan said, “you’ll see.”

 

Kit didn’t have nightmares for months.

  
045\. Sinful.  


Stephen stood at the foot of the climbing frame, a hand shading his eyes, and watched Kit scrambling to the top, a tiny figure in a grey jacket. Ryan shifted beside him.

 

“What is it?” Stephen asked, glancing at him, as Kit reached the top. He waved at the boy.

 

“I don’t like the way that tosser’s looking at us...”

 

Stephen glanced round, and noted a thick-set medium-height man with thinning hair, who was with a comfortable woman in a green jumper who looked to be his wife and a little Chinese girl playing in the sandpit. Seeing them watching, the man came over.

 

“You do know what you’re doing is wrong, don’t you?” he said very earnestly.

 

Stephen stared. Ryan gritted his teeth.

 

“That poor boy up there. You’re teaching him to believe that something so fundamentally abnormal is right.”

 

“Oh yeah?” Ryan said, with distinct undertones of ‘thing in primeval caves which ate prehistoric people for dinner and picked its teeth with their bones’ in his voice.

 

“In the Bible,” the man began, and was interrupted by a loud thud as of someone jumping off a climbing frame and Kit pushing between Stephen and Ryan and treating the man to a fuck-off glare, fists clenched. 

 

“Fuck off and die in a hole!”

 

“ _Kit_!” Stephen exclaimed, but only weakly; the man had gone purple and hurried away, and he was too relieved to be angry.

 

“I didn’t think bastards like that existed any more,” Ryan growled, relaxing only slightly. “Or at least, not in fucking Bristol.”

 

“Ryan! My God, the pair of you-“  


He was cut off by Kit turning and hugging both of them fiercely in turn. “You’re my parents,” he said, still wearing the fuck-off glare, which looked disturbingly like a Ryan Special from the days of Cutter running off through anomalies and having to be bopped on the head and brought home. “And you’re _fine_.”

 

“We know,” Stephen said, and Ryan ruffled Kit’s hair wordlessly.

 

“I don’t like churchy people,” Kit announced loudly, turning back to glare at the man again, who was hastily gathering up his family and moving on. “And I don’t like churchy people who make kids feel stupid and scared.”

 

When they got home, Kit made a beeline for the computer terminal and turned it on, saying he had to email Rav and it was important, then refused to talk about the entire incident, but was thoroughly clingy for the rest of the weekend. Even when they met up with Blade, Lorraine, Ditzy, Claire and associated children, he wouldn’t leave Stephen’s side until Carys treated him to another disturbingly recognisable look, this one Lorraine’s patented I’m Afraid I Must Insist Stare, and then returned frequently, as if just to check that they were still there.

 

That evening, Carys hijacked her father’s phone call to Ryan in order to explain about the weird churchy person they found in the playground, and how he’d been a foster-father of Kit’s that didn’t work and had made Kit really unhappy and wasn’t supposed to foster kids ever again, and Kit was kind of scared that Ryan and Stephen wouldn’t be there one day, and he’d have to go back to people like Pam and Mike Yates, or to his mother, and that he hadn’t told Ryan and Stephen this because he didn’t  want them to worry.

 

Stunned, Ryan had asked if she should be telling him this.

 

“Yes,” Carys had said, and banged the phone down.

  
046\. Skating.   


“Eeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”

 

 _Thud_.

 

“Robbie!” Kit yelled, exasperation plain in his voice. Carys was laughing, heartlessly. “We told you to snowplough! _Snowplough_!”

 

“Oh God,” Finn moaned, and got up from the table outside the ice-rink café. “If he needs stitches again, Taylor will kill me.”

 

Stephen looked over at Kit, who shook his head and flung his hands into the air. Stephen grinned.

 

047\. Years.   


There was a loud thumping noise, and Kit appeared at the bottom of the stairs in the fitness centre, having jumped every one. Luci mock-scowled at him and shook her head threateningly; he smiled innocently and skittered into the café.

 

“I swear, Ryan, sometimes it seems like you’ve had that little brat with you forever,” she said, with a softness in her voice that belied the insult.

 

“I know. It’s only been two and a half years, as well.”

  
048\. Space.   


“Come on, hurry up,” Carys snapped, grabbing Kit by the scruff of his neck and hauling him out of his chair, “we’re going to be late!”

 

Kit detached himself by the simple expedient of wriggling out of his jumper. “The exhibit doesn’t open for an hour! And we’ve got fast-track tickets, so we jump the queues. You can’t be that obsessed with space...”

 

“Planets are cool,” Carys grumbled.

 

“I don’t care,” Kit said ruthlessly, rubbing out the pencil marks on his inked drawing. “I’m not moving until your dad says it’s time to go.”

  
049\. Toys.

 

There was a loud bang, and all the adults with children leapt to their feet.

 

“It’s okay! It’s okay!” came a voice from Ditzy and Claire’s back garden, readily identifiable as Kit’s. “We’re all fine. ’Cept Robbie hasn’t got any eyebrows any more.” There was a pause. “Whose stupid idea was it anyway, giving Flick a Chemistry set? She’s blown up a pot plant.”

  
050\. Watching the Clock.  


Sitting in History, Kit stared at the watch on his wrist, willing the second hand to twitch a little faster. Five minutes... four minutes... three minutes... they could hear others out in the corridor...

 

Finally, the teacher let his class go, and Kit jumped up, shovelled his things into his backpack and ran out as politely as possible, charging down the corridors and skidding to a halt next to Stephen waiting in the playground, who grinned at him and teased him about wanting to get out of school.

 

Kit grinned back.


End file.
